letterman comments

SS has attacked ships in all waters, even in Japanese waters. Read up your facts before you spew ignorance on a public forum. SS is a terrorist group. Whether I agree with whaling or not, SS is not the way to tackle anything. It's one sonofagun's way to get his 15 minutes and thanks to clueless blokes like yourself he gets them. Frigging lowlife dacoits.

Private risk taking and entrepreneurship cannot only be instigated by the government. The society of Japan is highly geared against an entrepreneur as it extols the virtues of working with big corporations. The change needs to come from the media, from the schools, from the popular opinion of what is respectable.

Cleo: Sorry, I dont check these forums often. It's necessary to kill some whales (5-6 a year, so let's not make it a huge issue) BEFORE they die. You didn't read my note, so I'll try again:

If we could collect whale cadavers for research, we most definitely would. Problem is, the logistics are inane.

So we must kill them in water. Net them so they don't sink. Then, perhaps harpoon them. Of course we'd like to follow your "humane" approach and offer the whales perhaps a petite painless little poison pill, but somehow we've still to figure out a way to make this happen.

As for whales, should we wait until they die and are on the ocean bed? Will your dad pay for finding these whales at the bottom of 2 miles of ocean and dragging that carcass out of the water for research?

A note to fellow Australians in the forum. Japan is hunting Minke whales now, which are far from endangered -- if you think so, show me the numbers.

Now. Australia however is hunting the "southern bluefin tuna", which is a "critically endangered" species of fish. Smack of just a tad bit of hypocricy?

http://www.ens-newswire.co​m/ens/feb2007/2007-02-08-0​3.asp or http://snipr.com/1vvks

Ironically Australia exports the product to Japan. Should our approach to "endangered species" depend on whether our jobs and export income are at stake?

Finally, any guesses on the annual size of the whale-watching industry in Australia? US$ 3 billion, sweet folks. Nuff said.